Age of ship and boiler
New Zealand to Tahiti. I was curious to look around the ship one day and in the boiler room I asked a man how old the ship was. He smiled and replied me in this way: ‘The ship is twice as old as its boiler was when the ship was as old as the boiler is now. And the combined age of the ship and the boiler is thirty years.’
Can you figure out what is the age of the ship and of the boiler?
Let’s assume that the age of the ship at present is X years and of the boiler Y years.
Then
The ship X is twice as old as its boiler (Y—X) was when the ship was (x—X) as old as the boiler is now.
X = 2 (Y—X) and (x—X) 2. Eliminating X gives 4Y = 3x. Also, x+Y = 30
Y (the boiler) = 90/7years and
X (the ship)= 120/7 years
Let the age of the boiler now be B, and the age of the ship now be S. According to the problem statement, we have the following two equations:
- S = B + (B/2) = (3/2)B (the age of the ship when the boiler was as old as it is now was B/2, and the ship was twice as old as the boiler at that time)
- S + B = 30 (the sum of the ages of the ship and the boiler is 30)
We can substitute the first equation into the second equation to get:
(3/2)B + B = 30
Solving for B, we get:
B = 12
Substituting B = 12 into the first equation, we get:
S = (3/2)B = 18
Therefore, the age of the boiler is 12 years and the age of the ship is 18 years.
Your Answer
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